Friday, April 26, 2013

In the end, it was all about winning. And for five years,
Kevin Martin’s team won more than anyone – Briers, cashspiels, Grand Slams and,
of course, a Gold Medal.

But over the past year and a half, for some reason, the
winning stopped. The rink that once dominated the ice lanes, looked positively
mediocre as it trudged through big events. As the losses mounted, the tensions
increased. In fact, they grew to such a level that something had to give. That
something came Wednesday when third John Morris informed his teammates he was
leaving.

“There wasn’t a specific moment,” said Morris when asked how
he made his decision. “It was a tough season and any time a team isn’t playing
well you start to question things. But it wasn’t like I woke up one day and
said ‘I’m done.’ I just realized that I had to make a change.

“It was extremely tough. I’ve broken off with a few
girlfriends and it wasn’t as tough as this.”

Morris informed his teammates in a conference call, leaving
them equally surprised and sad for the end of the rink. It was all done without
anger or malice, a clean parting of the ways.

“The bottom line is the team wasn’t playing like it should
have and could have, especially with the talent we have, and when that happens
something has to change,” said Martin in his first interview since the
departure. “John stepped up and decided to make a change.

“John handled
things really well. There was no negativity between any of
the team and John. He laid things out well and said he would send out a release
announcing it. It went viral pretty quick.”

“We weren’t thinking [he was leaving],” said lead Ben Hebert
when asked about the call. “We knew they were leaking a little bit of oil,
Kevin and John. They were just playing very poorly, surprisingly poorly. They
were practicing hard and putting the time in but they just couldn’t seem to
make it work. I think they were having some personality conflicts that neither
one of them could get over. Either they had to get over it or something needed
to happen.”

In the release, Morris said he and Martin were no longer
thriving in their back-end roles as they did in the run to the gold medal and
that his desire for the game had waned.

“When I play, I need to feel passion and excitement,” Morris
stated. “That wasn’t there. I don’t think anyone has any fun when you’re
losing.

“We were losing to teams and players we should have been
beating and that was hard to take.”

While Team Martin still won games here and there, and
managed to earn $70,000 on the World Curling Tour, this past season was close
to a disaster. It went 1-5 at the Canada Cup, failed to make the playoffs at
the Brier in front of the hometown fans, never reached a Grand Slam final and
only got as far as a tiebreaker at the season-ending Players Championship.

“We were a team that was used to winning but we weren’t so
there was tension that way,” admitted Martin. “I think we were all waiting for
things to get back to normal and they never did.”

The tension between Martin and Morris was evident on the ice
and Morris’s body language often told the story. As the year went on, it only
became worse.

“The consistent losing and the way we lost, just never
getting eight shots in a row any more,” Hebert stated. “Someone was missing
here and there, and then there was pointing fingers and the blame game . . . it
just wasn’t a good vibe. We could have tried to go through it one more year and
hope for the magic to come back [but] John decided he wanted to make a change.”

“It was tough to feel like we couldn’t really control it as
much as Ben and I wanted to fix things,” added Marc Kennedy. “It was tough to
just watch them. We have so much respect for both of them. When we were going
good, they were the two best curlers in the world so to see them not be able to
get it together to play their best at the same time was difficult.”

Martin said there was no personal animosity between the two,
calling Morris a good friend. But he added that the difference in ages and
personal situations – Martin, married with grown-up kids and Morris single –
meant there wasn’t always a lot in common off the ice. Still he noticed a change
in his third.

“I could tell over the last four months that he wasn’t his
old self,” Martin said.

The three players are now coming to terms with the end of
one era and the start of another.

“The last day and a half has been pretty sad,” admitted
Kennedy. “We were an amazing team and having a chance to reflect on the last
seven years and everything we’ve accomplished and it’s just sad to know it’s
come to an end.”

“I heard John say ‘We’re turning into Ferbey in their last
couple of years,’” said Hebert, “because they were still a really good team and
would win the odd event, or qualify and bow out. But at the same time they
weren’t the same team they were when they were flying. They played together
because they wanted to shake hands at the end and call it a good run. They were
pretty much irrelevant at the end. We didn’t want to be that.”

Morris said he’ll focus on the good times the team enjoyed
as he moves on.

“I think we had a fantastic run and to know I had a chance
to play with the best player ever in Kevin is something I’ll remember for a
long time.

Now the search for a replacement begins and for Morris, the
hunt for a spot on a new team is likely underway. Martin stated emphatically
that he’d only briefly talked to one other person prior to our conversation but
that something would likely happen within the next couple of weeks.

The rumours are already flying on social media with names
dropping left and right. One possibility that wasn’t denied by the team was to
have Kennedy move up to third and bring in a new front-ender.

“Our goal hasn’t changed,” Martin stated. “We are still
trying to get to Sochi.”

Morris said he’s going to take a deep breath and reassess where
things are and what he wants to do.

“I feel like I’m in the prime of my career,” he said. “I
know I still have it in me.”

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Murray McCormick of the Regina Leader-Post has the reaction of
Kevin Martin team lead Ben Hebert to the departure of John Morris. The third
announced he was splitting with the team on Wednesday after a seven-year run
that was highlighted by a gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics. It seems the
news was a surprise.

These comments seem to indicate Morris’s move, announced to
the other three in a conference call, took the team by surprise. While it’s not
a surprise that the Martin team struggled in 2012-13, coming on the even of the
Olympic Trials the shake up is shocking.

He stated that the team has no idea as of yet who will be
the new third.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

You always knew there was a life span on the team, that
despite its success it would fracture at some point. It wasn’t the front end
where Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert looked after things, but at the top where
Kevin Martin and John Morris got along, but never really saw eye to eye.

And that gave way when Morris announced he was leaving the
team on Wednesday evening, ending what was one of the most successful rinks in
Canadian curling history. You can read the CCA's release here.

And what a team it was. They won a ton of stuff including that gold medal. Oh they looked happy and all
team-like when they were winning – which was a lot – but Martin and Morris were never
friends in the same way the members of Glenn Howard’s rink are. When curling
season was over, they’d go their separate ways, Martin one way and Morris
another. When the curling weekends were over, they’d part -- heck when games were over they often
didn’t spend any time together.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just different than many
teams. And it wasn’t always that way -- I was with the teams on many occasions
when you could tell that Morris and Martin did get along, if only for an
afternoon or an evening or perhaps it was for the cameras.

But Johnny Mo is a skip through and through. So is Martin,
obviously and when you don’t win games as you once did, two skips is too many.

So it’s not really surprising that Morris left. It is
surprising that he did it just a few months before the Trials for the next
Olympics. Then again, they way they were playing, they weren’t going to be
packing for Sochi anyway. The team was lousy at the Brier and not much better
at the Players Championship. Without a big turnaround (something they were
capable of), the Trials would have been just another disappointment. Why
prolong the agony, might have been Morris’s thinking.

Now comes the next chapter for both sides. Morris will look
for another team for next season and possibly a team that's already qualified for the Trials -- the music hasn't stopped yet but there aren't enough chairs -- while Martin, Kennedy and Hebert will
have to find a third. In a hurry.

There’s a long list to choose from and you don’t have to
necessarily just look at guys who play third. There may be a few skips who
might get a call – hey, it worked last time, didn’t it?

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Yesterday I headed down to Maple Leaf Gardens (It might be
known as the Mattamy Athletic Centre, but it will always be MLG) to take in the
Players’ Championship and, I have to say, I was blown away. Herewith my
thoughts on the last big event on the curling calendar:

Facility

The new arena at Maple Leaf Gardens is nothing short of
amazing. How they managed to build a rink on the third floor of a building that
didn’t have a third floor is stunning and a reason why I’m not an engineer.
What remains is the old MLG ceiling, familiar to anyone who watched a game
there – minus the banners of course.

It’s bright and open and has seating for about 2,500, a
perfect size for this type of event. There was beer for sale although there was
no real patch, just an area at the top of the rink where you could drink.

About the only downside for curling was the lack of end
seating – the vast majority of the seats are on the side.

Fans

Here’s where I was surprised, in a good way. Everyone likes
to slag Toronto for, well, for just about everything, and it’s certainly never
thought of as a curling town. Rogers went out on a limb, perhaps naively, by
holding the crown jewel of the Grand Slam at the Gardens but the crowds have
been solid. I’d say that yesterday afternoon there were about 2,000 people in
the building. Now I realize that’s not exactly Brier-like, but for a GSOC event
in April, it was pretty good. I heard Friday evening’s gathering was similar.
It bodes well for anyone wanting to have a big curling event in this city
(hello Warren Hansen?)

Curlers

The curlers I talked to loved having this event in Toronto
for a number of reasons. First off, the facility was given a big thumbs up. The
ice was good, the lighting was good, and it was within walking distance to the hotel.
There was also the cool factor of playing in such a historic building.

But the players also loved being in Toronto, where there was
so much to do outside of curling. Players went to Jays games, Leaf games, went
shopping (Not to be sexist but I heard that answer from every one of the women
I talked to), went to the theatre and were generally enjoying themselves, often
times bringing their families along.

The other thing I heard was that a great many of the teams
had sponsors with offices based in Toronto whom they were able to bring out to
games, something they don’t get to do too often.

Media

With the help of Rogers, there was a huge push of getting
players into the public eye be it on radio or TV. Glenn Howard, Kevin Martin
and Brad Jacobs were all front and centre, something that probably wouldn’t
have happened if this was in some smaller centre. It was a big bonus for the
Slam even if non-Rogers media largely ignored the event.

The Future

Next year, the Players Championship heads to Summerside, PEI,
as a sort of make-good for the debacle that was last year. After that, however,
it appears there is a push to try and make Toronto the permanent home of the
Players. With the support of the curlers and just about everyone else, look for
this to happen.

Overall

Seems like this edition of the Players Championship was a
hit on every level. Congrats, Toronto.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Canada limped into the playoffs last night after losing its
fourth game in the last five contests. Brad Jacobs and his crew dropped
contests to Denmark and Sweden Thursday putting them in fourth spot. They’ll
meet the Danes in the 3-4 game.

In their contest on Thursday, Jacobs gave full credit to
Denmark, as this AP story explains:

Of course, the 3-4 game isn’t unfamiliar territory for the
Canadian rink. At the Brier, when it was the Northern Ontario team, it finished
at 8-3 and a spot in that same do-or-die contest. It will need to rally to stay
in the event.

Clearly, the rink isn’t firing on all cylinders. Using the
WCF stats as a measurement tool (which I’m loathe to do), Jacobs is in fifth
spot with a lackluster 83 per cent average. He’s had four games in the 70s.

But at the Brier, he had five there too. And for the 17
round robin games at the Brier he finished up at 83 per cent as well.

The difference is when he played his strong games. At the
Brier, Jacobs ended with game of 92, 97, 82 and 83 per cent while here, his
last four games are 72, 83, 75 and 80. At the Brier the team seemed to play better as the week went on. At worlds, the look to be running out of gas.

So the boys from the Soo are going to have to find that
extra gear as they did in Edmonton. Good thing for them is that they know they
have it.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Brad Jacobs is not having a good time in Victoria. At least
not on the ice in the last few days. The Canadian skip and his team are
struggling and it showed yesterday when the rink split games with a loss to
Japan and a win over Russia. Here’s the skipper to Monte Stewart of the
Canadian Press.

Meanwhile, in Russia, a
nation is disappointed with the performance of the men’s rink which has a firm
grasp on last place. And there’s just a simple reason said the head of the
Russian Curling Federation. Or is it association? I can never remember.

Lack experience and some technical details . .. you know, minor stuff like that. Of course old worn out coach-for-hire Roger Schmidt, who is now running the Russian program, will have it figured out. However there is something to look forward to.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Brad Jacobs took on the rather uh, unusual looking -- for curling that is -- Finns on Sunday and played one of the sloppiest games the team has had in some time. Despite that, he and his Canadian mates rallied for a comeback victory. After that contest, he told Monte Stewart of the Canadian Press that it wasn't a game they'll review as a how-to:

Jacobs gave up a four-ender to the Finns -- which feature a guy with dreads and another guy with a gnome-like beard -- the first four they've dropped in a this championship run. The TSN microphones picked up Jacobs telling Ryan Fry: "That's the worst end we've played in a long time."And give the Finns credit: they played very well and called a strong game too. Then it was on to the Scots and it was back to their normal pattern of play for the Canadian squad. Here's a quote from the Al Cameron story CCA press release: